BIRD, BEAST AND HUNTER. 31 



our animals, than wliole fleets of navigators and scientific 

 pedants in silk stockings, could attain to in half a century. 



It is only those who have dared to live such lives as they 

 did, and through familiar associations with them, have been 

 enabled to unite scientific accuracy with the gleanings of their 

 rude lore, who are to be depended upon as true delineators. 

 Such men have our great naturalists been. Such men were 

 Wilson, Godman and Audubon. With the eye, step, and 

 frame of an Indian — the astuteness, nerve and intrepid skill 

 of the pioneer hunter, and the learning of the savan united 

 in himself, the Hunter Naturalist of America has pushed his 

 way, rifle in hand, into the secret places and confidences of 

 nature. He has carried her jealous defences by storm, and 

 may almost be said to have " wooed her as the lion wooes his 

 bride," will ye, nill ye ! There have been few such ardent 

 investigators among the Old World Natui'alists until of late. 

 Though many of them have been great travellers, and have 

 professed to examine the subjects of their favorite science, 

 amidst native surroundings — yet in method and spirit they have 

 been entirely unlike the American. While the American, in 

 the confidence of practice and self-reliance, has been content 

 to trust in his own good right arm for provision and defence, 

 they have been sent out by Royal Institutes, with all the un- 

 wieldy appointments of a scientific progress, to explore the 

 " sands and shores and desert wildernesses." While he, with 

 habits as hardy and simple as those of the wild creatures 

 themselves, has moved among them without their being 

 aware — has plucked the same berries, drank from the same 

 spring, and rested beneath the same shades, with his calm, 

 bright eye, like that of an invisible presence, forever upon 

 their unconscious lives, has read them in their freedom 

 like an unsealed book — the Europeans, with their lumbering 

 trains, have brought dismay and terror into the startled soli- 

 tudes, and at best have obtained nothing but unsatisfactory 

 glimpses of retreating forms, or the clumsily slain "speci- 



